Wrestling: Mead rallies for dual meet win over Holy Family

Howerton scores the win of the night in double overtime

For nearly six minutes on Thursday night, the Mead senior was locked in an epic struggle with Holy Family's Cade Carter at 195 pounds.

"I was so exhausted," he said. "I didn't realize how out of shape I really was."

But Howerton found enough in the tank at the start of the second overtime to put Carter on his back and score a rare pin at 7 minutes, 9 seconds. It was the highlight for the Mavericks, who rallied for a 45-24 win over the new-look Tigers under the direction of coach Nestor Pino.

"A match like that teaches me what I have to do and how hard I have to go in practice to get into shape and get ready for those overtime matches," Howerton said. "They don't always happen, but when they do, you've got to be ready for them."

It was an interesting match, that Carter — one of the Holy Family football players that was challenged to join the sport by Tigers coach Mike Gabriel — forced into overtime by nabbing a penalty point late in the third period.

Neither wrestler was able to score in the first overtime that started in the neutral position. Carter started the second overtime on top, but Howerton quickly turned the tables and got Carter on his back to score the valuable six team points.

""I think he found out he has a little more gas in the tank than he thought," Mead coach Ty Tatham said. "He just stuck to his game plan. He didn't make a lot of mistakes and forced the other guy to make mistakes and it ended up paying off for him."

Advertisement

After a slow start, the Mavericks gained confidence and won five of the final six matches that were contested.

Mead got pins from Conrad Burgesser (170), Peyton Howerton (195), Jack Gallegos (220) and Jeremiah Cortez (138), who was saved by the bell in his match against Anthony Woods.

Woods was initially awarded a pinfall, but it was later determined that it came after the buzzer.

Article Comments

We reserve the right to remove any comment that violates our ground rules, is spammy, NSFW, defamatory, rude, reckless to the community, etc.

We expect everyone to be respectful of other commenters. It's fine to have differences of opinion, but there's no need to act like a jerk.

Use your own words (don't copy and paste from elsewhere), be honest and don't pretend to be someone (or something) you're not.

Our commenting section is self-policing, so if you see a comment that violates our ground rules, flag it (mouse over to the far right of the commenter's name until you see the flag symbol and click that), then we'll review it.